Oh hey, interesting to see a Finnish (fine, Karelian) character of all things, and pretty accurate too for all I can tell. Anything in particular inspiring you to connect her to this concept?

A couple of things...

1) I want the NVAE game to have a decent representation of most nations in that region. For instance, to my shame, there is a whopping one character in this setting who hails from New Zealand and he happens to be a PC played by someone from New Zealand. I feel like I've really dropped the ball here. I'm not saying I want a token character for every nation--I want it to feel natural and like the character is more than their nationality--but I feel like realistically, there should be someone in that country who developed abilities.

2) McGuffin. One of the players in the NVAE game actually hails from Finland. Sometimes we talk. He has been a huge help with regard to breaking down various aspects of all things Finland. He's inspired several aspects of the campaign world with regards to Finland. Thanks to him, I even have an idea for a full session that I need to shoehorn into the story. For instance, I was ignorant of Finland's practicing conscription. Factor in that McGuffin said that Finland would likely be a nation where Neo-Sapiens would be accepted, and like that the idea of a Finnish team of supers folded into the Finnish Defense Force was born. There's the notion that, after Otso (another Finnish student at the NVAE) graduates, he would do his duty and enlist, meaning that at some point, I need to have the class take a field trip to Finland to see what some of their classmates will be doing one day.

3) I read too much. I dig history--it's all just one really big and complicated story, after all. I find myself reading about random historical events and thinking how I can utilize it in the campaign. At one point, I was reading about Karelia, and realized that I could end up employing some of that into a character's background. I had been wanting to do a lava character for a while, as a foil to the PCs who were pretty big into grappling at the time. I killed two birds with one stone and made the lava character a Karelian who's personality is largely influenced by history.

1) I want the NVAE game to have a decent representation of most nations in that region. For instance, to my shame, there is a whopping one character in this setting who hails from New Zealand and he happens to be a PC played by someone from New Zealand. I feel like I've really dropped the ball here. I'm not saying I want a token character for every nation--I want it to feel natural and like the character is more than their nationality--but I feel like realistically, there should be someone in that country who developed abilities.

2) McGuffin. One of the players in the NVAE game actually hails from Finland. Sometimes we talk. He has been a huge help with regard to breaking down various aspects of all things Finland. He's inspired several aspects of the campaign world with regards to Finland. Thanks to him, I even have an idea for a full session that I need to shoehorn into the story. For instance, I was ignorant of Finland's practicing conscription. Factor in that McGuffin said that Finland would likely be a nation where Neo-Sapiens would be accepted, and like that the idea of a Finnish team of supers folded into the Finnish Defense Force was born. There's the notion that, after Otso (another Finnish student at the NVAE) graduates, he would do his duty and enlist, meaning that at some point, I need to have the class take a field trip to Finland to see what some of their classmates will be doing one day.

3) I read too much. I dig history--it's all just one really big and complicated story, after all. I find myself reading about random historical events and thinking how I can utilize it in the campaign. At one point, I was reading about Karelia, and realized that I could end up employing some of that into a character's background. I had been wanting to do a lava character for a while, as a foil to the PCs who were pretty big into grappling at the time. I killed two birds with one stone and made the lava character a Karelian who's personality is largely influenced by history.

That's pretty neat. I dunno if it's an inferiority complex, but you probably wouldn't be far off in calling it one, as Finns think our country is really obscure and are kinda memetically excited to see mention, never mind representation of it (ignoring the fact that even in Europe there are many more way smaller and obscure ones).

Funny that I ended up building a werebear named Otto in my own build thread. Clearly, great minds think alike.

Are you still running the same game, Michuru? Or is this is a spinoff?

Same game, heaven help me. I'm terrible at ending things.

Being a relatively latecomer, I'm glad its still going. Besides, we haven't even caught up to the regular NV storyline at this point.

I have no plans to stop, either. Though, honestly, I should really get off my butt and work on the NV story a bit. It’s been on hiatus for a few years now...

At this point, I may just turn NV into a narrative-only story. Maybe three of my players are still available. One is dealing with some fairly heavy personal stuff; another is working full time and going to school for his MBA; another left the state entirely; one started a family and doesn’t have time for gaming...

I’ve started playing D&D with a group of awesome people and feel like it would be cool to play some M&M with them. Part of me is tempted to set a game at the NVAA, but part of me wants to have the NVAA show up in this game and quasi-revisit the Trials (all stories need a tournament arc). Plus, I’m still sitting on what exactly Bishounen’s powers are and always envisioned revealing those in a battle against a PC...

1) I want the NVAE game to have a decent representation of most nations in that region. For instance, to my shame, there is a whopping one character in this setting who hails from New Zealand and he happens to be a PC played by someone from New Zealand. I feel like I've really dropped the ball here. I'm not saying I want a token character for every nation--I want it to feel natural and like the character is more than their nationality--but I feel like realistically, there should be someone in that country who developed abilities.

2) McGuffin. One of the players in the NVAE game actually hails from Finland. Sometimes we talk. He has been a huge help with regard to breaking down various aspects of all things Finland. He's inspired several aspects of the campaign world with regards to Finland. Thanks to him, I even have an idea for a full session that I need to shoehorn into the story. For instance, I was ignorant of Finland's practicing conscription. Factor in that McGuffin said that Finland would likely be a nation where Neo-Sapiens would be accepted, and like that the idea of a Finnish team of supers folded into the Finnish Defense Force was born. There's the notion that, after Otso (another Finnish student at the NVAE) graduates, he would do his duty and enlist, meaning that at some point, I need to have the class take a field trip to Finland to see what some of their classmates will be doing one day.

3) I read too much. I dig history--it's all just one really big and complicated story, after all. I find myself reading about random historical events and thinking how I can utilize it in the campaign. At one point, I was reading about Karelia, and realized that I could end up employing some of that into a character's background. I had been wanting to do a lava character for a while, as a foil to the PCs who were pretty big into grappling at the time. I killed two birds with one stone and made the lava character a Karelian who's personality is largely influenced by history.

That's pretty neat. I dunno if it's an inferiority complex, but you probably wouldn't be far off in calling it one, as Finns think our country is really obscure and are kinda memetically excited to see mention, never mind representation of it (ignoring the fact that even in Europe there are many more way smaller and obscure ones).

Funny that I ended up building a werebear named Otto in my own build thread. Clearly, great minds think alike.

Honestly, Finland is pretty high up on my bucket list of places to go before I die. Kakslauttanen seems amazing. There’s a part of me that wants to lay in bed and gaze up through a glass ceiling at the Northern Lights...

Biography: The second of two children born to Ollie and Pam Wojcieovsky, Billy manifested his mother’s ability to remove and reattach her body parts when he was eight months old. While learning to stand on his own, Billy fell and clipped his arm on the edge of the coffee table. His hand popped up. He started to cry. His sister—only two years his senior—began to laugh, which made Billy laugh. Thus began a lifetime of using his powers to make others laugh… and more often than not, groan.

As a teenager, Billy’s parents enrolled him at the New Vindicators Academy. He was put onto a training squad with Abe Chobanian, Greg Foster, and Jim Loder. The group took on the name Team Loder, with Jim assuming command almost instantaneously. Billy was routinely overlooked by Jim, due to his abilities’ lack of a combat application. Considered useless by the other boy, but yearning to be accepted, Billy took to playing the part of a court jester to his class’ king. He routinely belittled and humiliated himself to stay in the youth’s good graces.

Nevertheless, Billy was always aware that he was not as useful as Abe and Greg, and he wasn’t as cool or handsome as Remy. As Jim and Remy began dating Kim and Suzie, Billy set his sights on some of the other girls in their class: Jim’s twin sister was off-limits, and her roommate Lucia seemed disgusted by the Canadian.

As he entered his sophomore year, Billy found himself fancying some of the incoming freshmen: Cyndi, Aisha, Mickie, Regina, Heidi… Still, his relationship with Jim and the others seemed to hinder his efforts to start a relationship. As the year dragged on, Billy saw two of his teammates—Abe and Greg—expelled from the school for the dangerous pranks Jim had them pull on their classmates. (TR #18) Billy found his only friends to be Jim and Remy and sank into a depressive funk.

His mood was not improved when it was revealed that Jim was responsible for the deaths of his siblings, Drew and Josie. With the school against him, Billy also turned against his friend. In the heat of battle, he discovered another a defensive aspect of his ability: he could divide his body around incoming attacks, letting him ignore several injuries. Further, his ability to reattach his limbs allowed him to heal faster than normal. (TR #29)

As the semester concluded, Apocatastasis was revived. Worse, the Elpis had arrived in his world. Abe returned to the school, working to evacuate it before the worst happened. After evacuating the campus to the Vienna school of Oubliette-137, Abe took Billy home to rescue his family.

Now, Billy is enrolled at the New Vindicators Academy of Europe. (NVAE #26)

Billy has a really cool visual for his powers,at least in my mind’s eye: I can see Billy dissolving into motes of different colors at the point of any attack’s impact. The ‘wound’ seals itself up as its being made.

Billy has a really cool visual for his powers,at least in my mind’s eye: I can see Billy dissolving into motes of different colors at the point of any attack’s impact. The ‘wound’ seals itself up as its being made.

That's pretty much the idea, actually. Honestly, Force Field might be a smidge more appropriate, as though it might require him to react to the incoming attack and make himself separate and reform around it...

Biography: In September of 2001, the Vindicators VII disbanded. The youngest member of their group—the sixteen-year-old Rift—was publicly known. Realizing that a normal high school existence was something beyond her grasp, the Department of SPB Affairs elected to establish a school for Neo-Sapiens and thus, the New Vindicators Academy was founded.

Of those few enrolled was a young man who went by Nor’easter. The young man attracted the attention of the Department of SPB Affairs when he stopped an armed robber in Halifax, Nova Scotia. At first, the local authorities assumed he was the next to bear the mantle of Captain Canada; the boy, who spoke with an Australian accent, claimed to have never met any member of the dynasty of weather-manipulating, Canadian super-heroes.

Though he was enrolled under the name Paul Livingston, Nor’easter later admitted to his classmates that it was a fake name that he gave the Department of SPB Affairs. Even though Nor’easter came to think of his classmates as his family, he never trusted them with his name—with Blitzkrieg (another member of their graduating class who never revealed his real name) pointing out that knowing his real name wouldn’t change how they felt about him. It was Ambrosia who bestowed the name Barry upon the youth—a name that only his closest friends used.

In 2003, Nor’easter graduated from the New Vindicators Academy, along with Rift, Blitzkrieg, Ambrosia and Nor’easter. After graduation, the five seemed to drift apart—apparently thanks to sexual tension: Nor’easter had feelings for Ambrosia, who was infatuated with Blitzkrieg; the speedster was in love with Rift who carried a torch for her former teammate, the Vindicator Godai.

Shortly after Katie Merrick had been attacked, Nor’easter appeared in New York. He advised one of the new students of his alma mater on how to better employ his abilities and exposed himself as an agent of the Affiliation. Though it is believed that Nor’easter played a part in Katie’s abduction, he was not seen on any of the battlefields of the White War…

Over two years later, Nor'easter appeared on the Vindicators' radar. For two years, he had been living in La Jolla, California as Chase Atkins. It seemed as though he had assumed a normal life: romantically involved with a doctor, Diana Camden, and working at a tech company. In reality, he had been sent there by Adonis to investigate Cadet Technologies--a subsidiary of Patriot Robotics--and develop a backdoor into the Sentries' programming.

Ultimately, he told the Vindicators everything--including his connections to the Captain Canada dynasty. The truth was that Chase' great-grandfather was the original Captain Canada, who had sired a illegitimate child while on a mission in Australia decades ago. Following the deaths of his parents, a sixteen-year-old Chase left Australia for Canada, in hopes of connections with his only living relatives.

Trusting him, the Vindicators allowed Chase to return to his work on the Sentries. Their ally, however, had other plans for him: Colonel Sidell recruited Nor'easter into a group he was building: a wetworks team of Neo-Sapiens who would do the things the Vindicators could not be seen doing. As a member of the Outcasts, Nor'easter would be tasked with assassinating threats to global stability--a role that the Australian reluctantly accepted.

Nor'easter got a bit of an update. Once upon a time, I imagined +4 as being the ceiling I could justify giving to most characters without a full-on devotion to martial arts or something. At this point, my philosophy is that each student of the New Vindicators Academy gets +1 attack and defense for each semester they spend there, representing the basic self-defense training they get. Nor'easter wasn't there the whole four years, sure, but he's developed a bit on his own too, so... he's hitting the caps there.

He also got a bit of an upgrade in the skill department, to reflect the life he's lived since being assigned to infiltrate Cadet Technologies.

Physical Description: Greg is average height for his age, with an athletic build. He keeps his hair short—almost buzzed—and tends to favor long-sleeved shirts with the sleeves pushed midway up his arms. His left ear is pierced and he typically wears a diamond stud in it. His uniform is unmodified.

Biography: Greg always had a way of getting what he wanted. As a small child, he would demand his older brother’s toys, and his brother would acquiesce. If he wanted ice cream for dinner, his mother would give in. When he was six-years-old and wanted to go to Disneyland, his father took out a mortgage to take him… without his brother and mother. His parents suspected that their son had an ability, but as neither was a Neo-Sapien, John accused Donna of cheating on him and the couple separated.

Some time later, the Fosters learned the truth: Greg was not a Neo-Sapien, but an Esper—a human being who simply was capable of using more of their brain than the average person. In Greg’s case, this resulted in the ability to control another person’s mind.

For years, his mother struggled to raise Greg on her own. As he entered high school, she enrolled him in the New Vindicators Academy. There, he was assigned a room with Abe Chobanian, and the two quickly became best-friends. Greg’s ability to make anyone do what he wanted coupled with Abe’s ability to go wherever he wanted made them a dangerous combination—one that Jim Loder was willing to exploit. The two were put on his team and the youth knew immediately how valuable such talents could be… both in Wreck Room exercises and out of it.

Ultimately, his role as Jim’s lackey condemned him. In their sophomore year, Greg and Abe did Jim’s bidding and bullied two incoming freshmen—Dirk Wolfram and John Saxon. Their deeds ultimately led to Greg and Abe’s expulsion from the school.

Greg returned home to Baltimore, only to find his mother had moved. After a year apart, Greg’s summer vacation had opened Donna’s eyes to how monstrous he was and the woman effectively abandoned him. He contacted his father, only to learn that the man’s new wife did not want Greg to join their family. Alone, Greg began using his powers to get by: a concierge at a hotel would give him a room; a server at a restaurant would cover his meal. For months, Greg simply got by… until the world went dark.

With Simulacrum’s revival of Apocatastasis and the arrival of the Armada in their world, it seemed that Greg would never see a tomorrow. A call from Abe turned things around: Abe and several others were working to evacuate the planet to another dimension. Abe was not only working to save his former classmates, but also their families. When asked for Greg’s parents’ locations, Greg lied and told the youth that he didn’t know where any of them were. While it may have been true for his mother, he knew where his father and brother were. However, their turning their back on him left him willing to condemn them to perish with the rest of their dimension.

Now, Greg finds himself a refugee on a new world—albeit in its past. With Abe’s own mother dying with their world, Greg’s only friend has become sullen and withdrawn. Alone with his thoughts, Greg has begun to search out for his parents’ younger doppelgangers in this world. Not only has he found them, but he’s discovered that his mother is currently pregnant with him. Unbeknownst to his classmates, Greg is plotting revenge against two strangers, for the crime of being doppelgangers of his parents.